CONTENT WARNING: Animal Abuse, Death

For about three years, I have been running a very small reptile rescue. It’s out of my home, and I meet people in public places when taking in or rehoming animals. I have rehomed over thirty animals since I started rescuing. I also own fourteen reptiles that I haven’t been able to get rehomed, most of which have disabilities. It’s hard work and can be costly, but in my small town, there are no other animal rescues that will take in reptiles. I have a website set up with information, adoption applications, and a section where you can message me if you want to surrender an animal. I check this daily.

One day, at 2:00 am, I get a message that nearly gives me a heart attack.

Message: “Hello! My eight-year-old son loooves reptiles! So much that he made us buy him more, and more, and more. Now, we have way too many of the d*** things because they keep breeding. I can’t keep count. I have at least three baby ball pythons, the mama, the daddy, three leopard geckos, and two crested geckos with, like, six babies. Oh! And the bearded dragon. We got him from [Pet Store Chain], but he’s so d*** mean. My husband is going to throw ‘em in the river if someone doesn’t take ‘em, so we can meet tomorrow at noon at [Location]. K?”

I’m pretty horrified, but I don’t want to scare her off, so I simply give a generic reply confirming the meeting. I spend all night preparing a small rack system for the baby crested geckos and baby ball pythons, as well as setting up a forty-gallon for each adult and twenty-gallon for each adult gecko, of course turning them on their sides for the cresteds. By the time I’ve set up everything, it’s 6:00. I barely get any sleep and arrive at the meeting place thirty minutes early. The woman arrives thirty minutes late. She drives a very expensive car and is very well-dressed.

As the woman gets out of her car, she says to the child in the backseat:

Woman: “Sorry, hun! We’ll buy you that parrot you said was sooo pretty online!” *To me* “Okay, the cages are in the back. I’ll pop the trunk and you take them.”

I quietly listen to her, simply wanting to get these animals out of this situation. I… have no words for what I see when I get to the trunk. Two tanks. That’s it. Each is crammed full of reptiles. Each tank is twenty gallons. I’m horrified. I simply grab the tanks, put them in my car, thank the woman, and drive home as quickly as I can without killing anyone.

Once I get home, I assess each cage. One twenty-gallon has an adult bearded dragon with a very infected eye and a ball python with seven babies, four of which aren’t moving. In the second are five baby crested geckos, one of which is mangled, four leopard geckos, and two adult crested geckos, both of which are, understandably, missing their tails.

All of the animals have missing scales and scars from fighting, one of the leopard geckos is missing a foot, and the babies all look sick. Every leopard gecko is missing toes and all of them seem to have stuck shed. I quickly move them to their new homes. Three of the ball pythons which aren’t moving are dead and partially eaten. A leopard gecko is missing a tail. There is one tiny hide in each cage and a very small water bowl, as well as a large number of crickets and pellets, most of which are dead.

I feed all of the animals, remove the stuck shed, and make an appointment for the vet tomorrow for the worst of them; I will take the healthy ones the next day. When I wake up, two more of the baby crested geckos are dead, as well as the leopard gecko with a missing tail.

I rush the worst ones to the vet. No emergency animal hospitals within several hours of me will take reptiles. In the end, the bearded dragon has his eye removed, and I manage to nurse the rest of the animals back to health.

I rehome most of the animals and keep the ones I can’t: the bearded dragon, leopard gecko without a foot, a baby crested gecko that ended up losing his tail, the adult female crested gecko, and the female ball python. I upgrade all of the animals to bigger cages and give them the best life possible.

The bearded dragon ends up being the sweetest one I’ve ever met. It costs me a huge amount to nurse the animals back to health and rehome them, but I don’t regret it. I’m only horrified that someone would do that to an animal, and I hope to never see something like this again.

I’m a foster home for dogs attached to the local pound. Sadly, that means a lot of dogs that make their way to my house have frankly seen some s*** and are not the friendliest of animals when they first arrive. I am known in our community for taking on the worst cases and mostly getting really good outcomes. I work from home at my part-time job, so people usually attribute it to the extra time I have to help the dogs adjust. I’ll tell anyone who will listen that it’s not me; it’s my three permanent dogs.

My first dog is a massive Doberman/cane corso mix named Silly. I got him when he was a year old — his name was Brutus back then — after his owner was arrested for dealing drugs. He came to me emaciated, constantly growling and snapping, with an untreated broken tail that had healed crooked and looked like an absurd flag sticking out of his butt. After a lot of hard work, he is now living his best life as a part-time scarf. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a 60-kg (132-lb) dog try and drape himself across your shoulders for a cuddle, but it’s an experience.

I think Silly does ambassador work for me; he’s always the first one to try to befriend the new dogs, showing them the best napping spots and refusing a treat unless I give all the other dogs a treat, too. If a scuffle breaks out, he shambles into the middle of it all and breaks it up. You don’t have much option but to move out of his way when he lumbers towards you. I haven’t heard him growl in years, but he is a big fan of lifting his head when the others are acting up and letting out a deafening bark, at which point the others all settle down. He is truly King Silly at my house.

My second dog is a golden retriever/lab mix named Butters. He is our playtime rehabilitation specialist. He failed out of being a service dog for being too dang friendly, and I wound up with him instead. I have seen numerous dogs come into my care who either never knew what a ball was or have forgotten. Worry not; Butters will show them! Every time I get a new dog come through, after meeting said dog, Butters digs and snuffles through the multiple toy baskets and produces what he believes is this dog’s ultimate toy. I have no idea what his criteria for choosing is. All I know is that every time he’s done it, that dog has figured out how to play within a week and that is, in fact, their favourite toy.

Butters is a big fan of chasey and loves a game of fetch, but he will also turn into a giant cat over a laser pointer. It’s hard to ignore his excitement and gentle good nature, so the others almost always join in. It’s lovely to watch a stray who was terrified of their own shadow turn into a giant overgrown puppy playing with Butters, who will play tug of war with anything but treats the new dogs so gently and always lets them win.

My third dog is a German Shepherd mixed with something round— either a pitbull, a staffy, or a boxer. He’s got long fur and stumpy little legs and a wee bit of bobblehead syndrome; despite being built like a barrel, his head is still too big for his body, and he looks a tiny bit like a child’s drawing of a dog. I only have him because an elderly man’s children bought him for their dad for companionship and he couldn’t keep up with caring for him, so instead, we go visit the man once a week so he can see his old owner.

He is the group therapist and I affectionately call him Doctor Timber, though he’ll answer to Doc or Timber. More than once, I have found him sitting quietly with a new recruit who is watching Butters act like a fool with the other dogs but is too scared to join in. He doesn’t mind if you want to sit down and not participate; he’ll sit right down with you so you aren’t alone. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him sleep alone when we have a new dog in the mix; he’s always snuggled up either next to or in their bed with them so they won’t be lonely in the night. His favourite thing is when we get puppies in. They firmly become Doc’s little shadows within a day as he teaches them how to dog.

I once had a dog come in who had been beaten severely by his previous owners and was snarling at everyone and everything who came near. This was the closest call I have ever had with a dog biting me. I have been bitten a bunch of times — it comes with the territory — but this one was simply so scared that he couldn’t calm down enough to stop. I’d climbed onto my kitchen counter to create some distance. Doc came charging in, and I tried to scramble down to separate them — I didn’t want Doc getting hurt — but whatever Doc said in “Dog” was enough. By the time I got onto the floor, the barky, snarly mess had stopped, and I was looking at a very scared but very contrite bull terrier who wouldn’t look at me but came shuffling forward to lay next to my feet and look ashamed of himself. Doc never touched the dog, and the dog never touched him, but he certainly made him chill out. 

Any time anyone says I do the best work with difficult dogs, I laugh. I don’t do the work; I just have the thumbs to open the food, the credit card to pay the vet, and the car to go to the dog park. I am, at best, the office manager of my trio, who are healing dogs one intake at a time!

This story is part of our Highest-Voted-Inspirational-Stories-Of-2023-(so far!) roundup!

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Years ago, I met a girl in a writing group. She was smart enough to attract me, and she reciprocated, so for a time we were in a relationship, and at one point, she moved into my apartment.

It was at that point that things got sour. Why? You see, I outright hate dogs, while over time, my girlfriend began to desperately want one to keep in our apartment. At first, she asked me many times, trying various tactics to get me to change my mind, such as promising to buy me a new laptop if I accepted or offering to pay for it entirely, but to no avail.

It all crumbled on my birthday. [Girlfriend] first gave me a “decoy gift”: a new electric razor. Then, to surprise me, she said she was going to take me out to have dinner at a fancy place in a nearby city. In actuality, she had decided to take me to an animal shelter where she had adopted a puppy and also had arranged to have a “care package” to keep it alive.

After a moment of being flabbergasted, I told her:

Me: “I am not taking that thing home.”

First, [Girlfriend] tried to guilt me into accepting it.

Girlfriend: “But it cost me so much to set all this up! And the volunteers will be so crushed to see you reject this puppy.”

Then, she changed tactics.

Girlfriend: “I’ll leave you here without a ride if you don’t go along with this!”

Since telling her that I was never going to love it wasn’t working, I decided that, actually, 70€ of taxi versus thousands spent in maintaining an animal I had no intention whatsoever of keeping sounded good.

Me: “Either you leave everything here and come back home with me, or you go back to your parents’ house with the dog while I take a taxi back to the apartment.”

Girlfriend: “Fine! Take the taxi!”

Then, she demanded that the shelter’s workers help her load up the car while I went out to the roadside to call the taxi. She arrived at our apartment earlier than I did, and she was about to unload a dog bed when I came back. She had already dropped a sack of dog food in the living room.

Me: “Put that stuff back in the car.”

Girlfriend: *Shouting* “I can’t believe you don’t want this puppy! What a cold, heartless [profanity]! If you don’t let me keep it, I’m breaking up with you.”

I was taken aback and stunned, but I was too determined: she clearly care more about an animal than she did about me. After several minutes of standing there in silence while she slowly started to sport a s***-eating grin, I told her:

Me: “Pick up your stuff and don’t come back. I’ll give you enough money to stay in a hotel room tonight.”

Her parents were four hours of car away and it was getting too late to reach them. 

She rejected that. Instead, shrieking and crying incoherently, she started to brusquely rip away everything she owned to stuff it in an old suitcase, while also trying but failing to destroy my stuff as I intervened to snatch those away from her.

She did call me a few times the next day, but it was over.

I found more compatible love later, to be sure. And this time, I haven’t gotten gifted pets yet!

I am feeding the puppies at our animal shelter, and my manager comes up to me.

Manager: “If you see a ditzy-looking woman in pink hot pants, absolutely do not let her start any puppy adoption process.”

Me: “Why?”

Manager: “Because she just asked me if we can change their DNA to make them stay puppies forever, and I don’t want another living thing to be subjected to that level of stupid.”

Puppies give us so much, the least we can do is make sure they go to responsible homes. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case with these 12 Stories About Amazing Puppies (And Some Customers Who Are Too Stupid To Own Them).

There’s a pet store nearby that is attached to a cat adoption shelter where I used to volunteer. Because of my interest in animals, I had wanted to work at the pet store itself for a while, and as soon as I heard they were hiring again, I sent in an application. Soon after, I got the interview, but I was nervous out of my mind as this was my first ever interview for an actual job I’d get paid for.

Time went on, and I still volunteered at the adoption center attached, and although I saw the manager who interviewed me from time to time, I never actually heard back. It upset me, but hey, what can you do?

A few weeks after the interview, I was finishing up my shift at the adoption center and getting things ready for the next volunteer. Although I didn’t have any pets at the time — nor any money to get anything for them — I still liked looking at what there was and generally just browsing for a while. While I was cooing at the angry Cockatiel up for adoption, I noticed a woman who looked like she needed some help.

Me: “Can I help you, ma’am?”

She did, and since I wasn’t doing anything, I helped her out. I practically followed her around the store, recommending things she’d need from what I’d heard from others, and lifting heavy things like kitty litter or dry food into her cart. When we were done, I helped her up to the register, and who did I see cashing people out? The manager.

As I helped the woman organize her stuff to scan, she was going on and on about me to this manager.

Woman: “They are so nice! They helped me so much; they’re a great employee!”

Me: *Kindly* “Thank you, but I don’t actually work here, ma’am.” *Cheekily* “I did send in an application a few weeks ago, though.”

Woman: *To the manager* “Oh! Well, you should hire this person! They’re so kind. They’d be a great employee!”

After she checked out, she went on her own way, and I went on mine to head home.

I never did hear back about that job.